Execution of right appointment setting techniques is a great way to accelerate your sales pipeline and be successful in sales. The common problem in appointment setting space is that people don’t have enough time to ” get pitched ” by sales people. In fact with increasing number of companies in this zone , their is a continues urge to be more and more professional and enhance your objection handling capabilities. Now we have a team of over 300 + experts who have a wide experience in delivering on various appointment setting campaigns for big clients. We would like to share their expertise and experience in form of this article about B2B Appointment Setting Tips And Techniques hoping this acts as a valuable resource for the readers to widen their grasp on B2B Appointment Setting.

B2B Appointment Setting Tips And Techniques

Your prospect’s can be anyone from a data admin to a CEO , and you can use a blend of techniques to reach out to your prospects . However B2B Telemarketing or cold calling is still the most effective way to do appointment setting services. To be successful in appointment setting you need to have several attributes : Research, precise record-keeping, assertiveness and energy, patience, and skill. Conventional Wisdom demands you to sit in office and make phone calls , but eventually there is more to this , so check out points below to know what to do and how to do to get better at B2B appointment setting .

15. Identify needs and match them to the benefits you provide : Every business has some on going issues which it would like to address. So if you do your research properly to reach out to the RPC , all you need to do is map their issues with your product and services offering and offer them the benefits you have. So addressing the issue is what is going to get you benefits of long terms sales partnership.

14. Be detail minded : Make a conversation , ask open minded question and pay lot of attention to what your prospects say over the call . This will always put you in a comfortable position to understand your prospect and their needs better.

13. Know and understand your audience : The better efforts you put into understanding your audience and know their current position around the products or service your are offering , the better results you would have from your telemarketing appointment setting campaigns.

12. Be Clear Specific and to the point : Time is valuable , understand and respect that. So while talking to a prospect , value the time he is spending talking to you and make the best out of it. Don’t go on with your script instead be specific and clear of addressing his problems with a solution through your offerings.

11. Objections are your friend : Objection handling should be your singular focus while making a conversation. How you handle the objections coming your way will set your prospects mind in terms of level of understanding he thinks you have and that he would like to do business with you . So be confident and smart by coming up with a relevant answer to your prospect’s query.

10. Make selling fun and be consistent : Don’t let that hunger die within you if you have some bad days in a row. Its about being consistent and enjoying whatever comes your way. Being in sales , you need to be self driven , self motivated and always look to close. Be consistent with your cold calling until you expertise in it.

9. It’s not just a number game : People often think that appointment setting is a number game, more dials, more pitches and more appointments. But it does not work that way. Many top performers are not the ones who score the maximum but are the ones who convert the maximum. There are skills, strategies and craft involved. Judgment and sales ability come into play, particularly with complex sales. There are strategies behind the component parts and structure of successful phone scripts to set appointments.

8. Appointment Setting should not be your only tool to make a sale : Its not about what tool you are using , its about what mix of tools you are using keeping in mind the investment in it against the ROI. The firm that has positioned itself over time so that all goals for revenue and profit are met by responding to inquiries generated by referrals and word-of-mouth is in an enviable position. But for start up companies and companies in growing phase , appointment setting with head of companies can really boost their business.

7. How to respond to ” Send me a email ” : A common blow off is send me a email about this and I would respond if I am interested. So the best response to this can be possibly - You know, I don’t send out general information. The corporate stuff I would send you is just going to tell you what I just told you. If there is something specific that would be helpful to you, if you have a purchase coming up, or a project we might help with, I would be happy to put something together and send it out. Do you have anything specific in mind that I can help you with?” At this point do the most difficult thing say nothing and wait for your prospect to speak. (There is more to this phone script to set appointments path.)

6. Provide alternative option : Always provide a alternate option while asking for a time for the meeting. Make sure you give enough options to your prospect so that he feels comfortable to connect with you on the time that suits his or her calendar. Never rush into asking them for a particular time .

5. When you hear “CALL ME BACK,” you must find out … : You have to know. Is this a run-me-around-the-block, time wasting, no-need, go-nowhere prospect who thinks that on their whim you are going to call and call and call, and who is going to suck every bit of set appointments motivation and energy out of your body by having you chase them, or is this someone who would welcome a phone call from you for a legitimate reason? You can find out now or find out 10 phone calls later. It’s your choice when setting appointments over the phone. Learn the script path for this.

4. Offer Help : Instead of keeping your tone like a sales guy pitching for your services, try sounding little more helpful by addressing their problems and providing a solution to them . This way you increase the chances of converting that prospect into a customer and develop healthy relationships.

3. Smile While Making Calls : First impression counts . Smiling while making calls helps you in two things. Firstly it makes you, as the telemarketer, feel better, and secondly the person being called can hear a smile and a bright sounding voice.

2. Preparation for Appointment Setting is not same as action : If five people are on a cliff and three decide to jump, how many are left? Answer? Five. Why? Because deciding to jump and actually jumping are two different things! So it is with appointment setting strategies You can be determined to increase sales, improve margins or both. You can acknowledge that improving your sales results will mean altering work habits, organization methods and your sales process. You can also enthusiastically announce to the world your determination to increase results. But actually changing and implementing improved appointment setting techniques is quite another story. So follow the steps above to enhance your appointment setting skill.

1. Assume the closing : Closing is where most of the sales guy fail . But remember the main reason you are calling is to set a appointment. So build the confidence to go ahead and set the appointment. Infact go further and Assume The Closing. Instead of asking the prospect what time is good for them, go ahead and suggest a date and time and ask if the given slot is comfortable with him/her. This approach is tested and is mostly likely to increase your conversion rate. Yes/no questions are very effective when it comes to appointment setting. So try this technique to see your conversion rate going up.

This was our list of B2B Appointment Setting Tips And Techniques . Share your feedback and any other tips you have on the topic in the comment section below and we would love to add those tips to the article.

Guest Blogging is not dead. Even after Matt Cutts released a post on his blog ” The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO ” , guest blogging has not lost its value. Guest Blogging is one of the most effective methods to build links , build your brand name and drive traffic and this holds true in 2014 too. Guest blogging has become one of the mainstream ways to build links and brand name. However guest posting is just a part of link building process and your SEO effort so it should not be done with a intention to drop a post on every blog you can find solely for the purpose of building links. Moreover the relevancy of the blog on which you are submitting your article is very important.

Since you have landed on this article to look for the top sales and marketing blogs for 2014 which accept guest post , without any ado , below is a list of Top 20 Sales And Marketing Blogs That Accept Guest Articles. These blogs will make the life of content marketers, seo guys in sales and marketing companies easy.

Top 20 Sales And Marketing Blogs That Accept Guest Articles

The blogs mentioned below have made it big in marketing world. If you want to join their team of esteemed authors , you will have to think out of the box and write in detail a long article supported by all the relevant links and images. Your article should add some value to their community and help their readers . Their guidelines are really strict so make sure first post you submit to these blogs is your best one so that it gets approved easily and even open the doors for you in future to keep writing for those websites.

So these were the top sales and marketing blogs that accept guest post. Now Guest Blogging has been a evergreen source to build backlinks, brand building , relationships , attract new audience , reach more people. Guest Blogging for SEO is perhaps dead or is on a steep slope to disappear soon in short future however Guest Blogging for non seo purposes is still powerful and has got a lot of mileage in it.

Tips on submitting your guest post on above blogs

Don’t just tailor content according to the reputation of the blog , keep in mind the profile of the audience too. Write content that resonates with the target audience and adds value to the blog in terms of readership. Such articles are easily accepted and helps you build a relationship with the blog author . Guest posting has always been about earning links rather than building spammy links. So you can continue to keep writing for other blogs as long as your aim is to write for more than SEO value.

Take time out to review our list of the Top 20 Sales & Marketing Blogs. This is a list of experts in B2B marketing technology, sales practices, sales and marketing whose thought provoking ideas and content have made a difference in how we think and how we sell. With a dynamic mix of experience and expertise these bloggers have created a rich ecosystem of knowledge and ideas that have led them to build a huge readership and trust.

Top Sales & Marketing Blogs For 2014

These blogs are a platform to exploring and understand the current sales and marketing landscape. So without further ado, and in no particular order, here’s our list of our favorite sales and marketing blogs for 2014.

HubSpot is an inbound marketing software platform that helps companies attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers. This blog has lot of educative content, and lots of useful information regarding inbound marketing. Their marketing platform and tools have helped many business owners around the world to grow their business and increase their organic traffic. It’s a must read blog for anyone who wants to understand inbound marketing.

Marketing technology is only going to expand as more products and services encompass further capabilities to store, analyze, and display marketing information. On that foundation, our survey and analysis revealed the following trends :

Death of Display Advertising and the Rise of Customer Data Platforms

1. B2B marketers are moving away from display advertising, placing their bets instead on social media and content marketing initiatives. These investments address the essential need to engage with the prospect. Doing so allows B2B marketers to facilitate the prospect/buyer’s engagement with the brand, and educate the prospect/buyer throughout the buying journey, all of which leads to making an informed decision.

2. We also see that marketing analytics, delivered over the web/mobile, as an area of strong interest to B2B marketers. Given the unparalleled value of granular and reliable market information available in real time, this makes sense. Like everyone else, marketers need to demonstrate ROI on the campaigns they execute, and analytics provides all the variables of the ROI equation.

3. Apparently, one of the biggest trends is the emergence of customer data platforms. These are central repositories of marketing data that not only keep marketing data clean and up to date, an age-old problem, but also push that data out to other systems, such as platforms for ads and/or marketing automation. The customer data platform could also start to play a key role in pulling together 360-degree views of individual prospects as they travel across town and navigate the web, engage with brand content, and interact on social media.

The inspiration and foundation for our special report on B2B marketing technology spends came almost exclusively from the brilliant Scott Brinker and the entries in his blog, Chief Marketing Technologist.

Since 2011, Scott has been putting together an ever-more complex, and therefore more thorough and valuable, map of marketing technology companies. Growing from about one hundred companies in 2011 to three hundred fifty in 2012, the latest iteration (January 2014) of his supergraphic catalogues nearly a thousand companies, which he groups into six classes (from marketing experiences to the internet marketing environment, noted above) that represent almost fifty categories.

Scott has taken the measure of the marketing technology space, and organized it in a way that makes sense to him and most B2B marketing businesses. Given how fast this space is growing and evolving, it’s easy to understand that the categories and classes will also change. New divisions of the landscape will make sense in the years to come. New categories will emerge, and others will combine with each other, and some will simply fade away as the technology advances.

We set out to build on Scott’s fantastic work, and identify investment trends in the world of marketing technology. It was a fascinating exercise to carry out, and we trust that you will profit from the information and benchmarks that we unearthed.

To stay ahead in the marketing arena, you need to know what technologies your competitors are investing in. Here is a digest of the latest trends.

Every ambitious B2B marketing enterprise is always exploring ways to reach more customers, show them how your capabilities align with their strategies, demonstrate that your services stand out from the pack, and make every dollar you invest carry its weight. Much of this, of course, you’re going to do with technology. (We’re living in the twenty-first century, right?) So how do you keep up with the technology, which revolutionizes itself every few months or so?

The last time we looked, there were more than a thousand technology products and services, which we can evaluate according to the functional areas of marketing experiences, marketing operations, middleware, backbone platforms, infrastructure, and the internet marketing environment.

B2B Marketing Technology Spend Report 2014

In such a rapidly evolving market, it’s easy get confused if you survey it on your own. There are more options than ever before in every category, and even if each one of them were terrific technology, you need to identify the ones that offer the most promise for your specific needs. The good news is all those options and all that rapid evolution mean the technology solutions for your business are out there, and getting better all the time.

To gain a view of technologies that are doing the most for those who use them, or at least to identify the ones that marketing technology companies are investing in most heavily of late, we polled and received responses from two hundred sixty B2B marketers in the United States and internationally.

The report that follows gives you a snapshot of how B2B marketers such as yourself are placing their bets on technology. We think that this information can be a big help to you in identifying your marketing technology requirements, and in delivering successful marketing programs.